Like Paris, Vienna, and other great and civilized European metropolises, café life has played an important part in the cultural history of Budapest. Around the turn of the previous century – as noted in historian John Lukacs’s book Budapest 1900 – the grand, opulently appointed cafes of Budapest were places of society both high and low, offices to writers, seats of revolution. Those days have past, and many of the best cafes have fallen into disrepair or had their leases taken over by fast-food chains. There are, however, still a few great old cafes in Budapest, and a few of them have been painstakingly (and, no doubt, expensively) restored.
The most recently (and splendidly) restored is the Lotz cafe in the Párizsi Nagy Áruház building on Andrássy Avenue. The building was designed by Zsigmond Sziklai, and construction was completed in 1909. The ‘Paris Department Store’ was the first modern department store in Budapest, catering to the city’s elite. It remained open during the Communist rule, though it was not known for the designer brands that modern shoppers can now find up and down Andrássy. Its full renovation took many years, but the building finally re-opened a few years back as an Alexandria book store flag-ship, and office space.
The café itself might look much the same as it did a hundred years ago, but for the odd tourist making use if the Wifi. It is one of those rare spots that is made use of by all different kinds of customer, from tourist to students and business-attired folk. No matter where you sit, the prime reason to loiter longer than you otherwise might is to gaze up at spectacular fresco on the ceiling, done by German/Hungarian painter Károly Lotz. The cafe is named in his honor. In a city where splendorous interiors abound, this one truly stands out. It is a museum piece, or a ticket to travel in time, all for the price of a cup of coffee.
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